Page 80 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

He washed. He changed his shirt. He sat at the breakfast table at seven and reviewed the post while the house assembled itself: the clatter of the kitchen, the pump handle in the yard, the tread of the scullery maid on the back stairs. Coffee came. He drank it without tasting it.

Alice arrived at a quarter past the hour. She wore the grey morning dress that buttoned high at the throat, the one she favored when the day required armor, and her hair had been pinned with the efficient severity that meant she had done it herself rather than wait for the maid.

She had not slept well. The evidence was in the pallor of her face, the shadows beneath her eyes, and the careful way she moved, as though distributing a heavy weight across every step.

She sat and reached for the teapot. Her hand was steady, and he watched the steadiness of it and felt something shift behind his ribs that he had no immediate use for and did not pursue.

“Good morning,” she greeted.

“Good morning.”

The silence that followed had substance, the kind built from shared knowledge and the agreement not to examine it before breakfast. He returned to his post. She poured tea.

Footsteps thundered in the corridor.

Freddie entered at the velocity that was his default state of locomotion, Charlie three paces behind, Miss Leyton’s voice trailing after them.

“Papa, Charlie says we have guests, but he won’t say who because he says it’s not his place, which is absurd because everything in this house is his place. He lives here. And I want to know who is eating our breakfast because Cook made the good rolls, the ones with the currants, and if someone is eating them before me, I need to know who so I can glare at them properly.”

Kenneth set down his coffee. “Sit, Frederick.”

“But who⁠—”

“Sit.”

Freddie sat.

Charlie took his chair with the measured precision of a boy who had resolved that sitting without instruction was the safest course available. His eyes moved to Alice, then to his father.

“We do have guests,” Kenneth said. He weighed the words once before committing. “Alice’s sister, Lady Rachel. And a gentleman called Mr. Mercer. They arrived early this morning and will be staying with us.”

Freddie’s head came up. His face underwent the rapid calculations that preceded his most penetrating observations. “Lady Rachel? The one who was supposed to marry you?”

“Yes.”

“The one who ran away from the church?”

“Yes, Frederick.”

“The one Alice also ran away from⁠—”

“That will do.”

Freddie considered this for a moment. Then he nodded, satisfied that he had established the salient facts, and returned to the currant rolls with the focus of a child who had determined that breakfast took precedence over genealogy.

Charlie said nothing. He buttered his toast in neat, deliberate strokes and watched the door.

Rachel and George arrived together. Rachel slightly ahead, George’s hand on the small of her back in a gesture that carried the unconscious ease of long habit. She wore a borrowed dress of Alice’s that sat imperfectly at the shoulders, and she moved with the care of a woman conscious of the eyes upon her. Her eyes immediately went to Alice, who rose and crossed to meet her.

Alice took her sister’s hand and guided her to the chair beside hers, and the motion was so seamless that Kenneth understood it had been practised between them since childhood.

George bowed. His bow was sincere and unrehearsed, and Kenneth, who had spent two decades receiving the bows of men who calibrated their deference to the nearest degree, noted the difference.

“Good morning, Mr. Mercer.”

“Your Grace.” George took the seat Kenneth indicated. His hands rested on the table, the fingers long and precise. Kenneth noticed Charlie staring at them.

Freddie turned to Rachel with the expression of a child preparing a cross-examination. “Are you having a baby?”